Iran’s Chickens Coming Home to Roast. Or Not…
Anyone who has spent much time eating Persian food knows how important chicken is, whether it’s roast chicken, chicken with pomegranate sauce and walnuts, or chicken kebab. So a chicken shortage or, worse yet, unaffordable chicken is a real problem, and it is doubly so during Ramadan. Right now, just at the moment that even the Iranian government has confessed the “devastating” effect of Western sanctions, the country is in the grips of a major chicken crisis.
Chicken prices have tripled in the last year, and nearly doubled in the last month, which has priced a significant number of Iranians out of the chicken market (or perhaps we should say it has priced Iranian chickens out of a significant number of households). Either way, there are a lot of very angry Iranians, who not surprisingly are blaming their government for this foul state of affairs. In part, the government is blameless, since the cost of imports and the cost of feed grain have been driven up by the sanctions. But then again, the behavior of the government provoked the sanctions in the first place, and the singularly incompetent economic policies of the regime probably constitute the most important cause of the crisis.
Worse still, the rising costs of feed grains – corn and wheat have increased about 50% as a result of drought, especially in the American Middle West – have made it impossible for many Iranian producers to continue to raise and sell chickens. It is not unusual nowadays to see long lines in front of chicken merchants, and the Iranians, with a sense of humor reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s greatest hits, have now started to talk about “chicken lines,” which divide the society between those who can both afford and obtain chickens, and those who cannot.
For its part, the regime is reacting with consummate cloddishness. The Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi, an infamous Holocaust denier who has offices in London as well as Iran, achieved celebrity by proclaiming “So what if people don’t eat chicken?” Doctors agree that meat is bad for you, after all (hat tip: Potkin).
This sort of buffoonery has not tamed the national chicken craving, and angry crowds are demonstrating around the country, especially when the national media foolishly ran pictures of a recent Tehran conference at which the attendees ate…well, you know what they ate.
Syria now, Iran next… Please hurry America. Elect a new Potus in November please….
a fowl situation indeed
Rising under the banner of “Poultry Power” the great Iranian Chicken Revolution begins…
Well you can’t eat Uranium.
In other news (reported by Elder of Zyon) the one Iranian Olympic athelete who would likely face an Israeli opponent, in Judo, suddenly came down with a stomach flu and did not leave with the rest of the team. The Israeli has won a bronze medal in the past. “Chicken revolution” seems appropriate.
The Iranian gubmint is for the birds.
You mean Iranians don’t have a chicken in every pot?
Referencing your comment about eating meat not being good for you—
In WWII, there was a shortage of meat in Denmark or Holland, I forget which. Seems that the incidence of many diseases fell dramatically.
meat was also rationed in the US at that time. Truman finally ended it well after the end of the fighting.
You’re kidding about meat right?
Sadly similar kind of logic, re: wartime meat consumption, prevails in America today. Associations are not causes. Most of America’s diet recommendations are based on faulty experiments like giving rabbits meat. Rabbits are herbivores and naturally do not eat meat so when bad things happened they projected it to man except man is omnivorous and is designed to eat meat. The McGovern Report is another example of idiocy and ignorance. Written by a VEGETARIAN they released it ignoring doctors warnings that is wasn’t comlete. When they protested they were told by government to shut up or lose grant money and their jobs. Other doctors were hired that toed the line. Thanks to all this stupidity America has seen an epidemic of heart disease, diabetes and cancer over the past 40 years. Gee, imagine if people were given scientific reasons instead of biased “Studies” about what constitutes healthy eating. We’re so dumbed down over the years it will be difficult to overcome because the same mantra is repeated over and over. It’s like believing the Earth is flat and suddenly someone discovers it’s round. Well the truth is meat especially beef with plenty of fat is good for you. Grass fed beef is preferred. I think America has a similar problem to the Iranian chicken problem. Grass fed beef is expensive. Similar cuts of grass fed organic beef can costs 2-3 as much versus corn fed cows. So while Ledeen scolds Iran for the price of chickens he should raise an issue with the FDA about the price of grass fed beef. As with turban wearing Islamics spewing religious mumbo jumbo we have similar ignorance right here at home. When the truth is known it becomes quite simple how we are lied to and manipulated by our own government. The Mullahs do it in the name of Allah and we do it in the name of the almighty dollar.
i’m totally with you on grass-fed vs corn-fed beef, but at least around here the price difference isn’t much, maybe 20% more for the grassy beef, and it’s often on sale, so we stuff the freezer. also, i find that it’s more satisfying than corn-fed beef, so I eat less of it (we eat beef once or twice a week, as you will have gathered, a lot of pasta is consumed at villa Ledeen)…
Outside of ground meat I find choice cuts of beef kind of expensive. I never was into the organic thing until I read “Radiant Health” by Brian Peskin. His research based on experiments and studies by the medical field is an eye opener. He destroys, using science and connecting the dots, common dietary suggestions. Unfortunately your beloved pasta is like eating cake. If you’re feeling a little tight around the belt area you might want to go easy on it. If you have the time view him on youtube. He primarily talks about cancer and heart disease. What separates him from others is EFO’s which he calls PEO’s. Parental Essential Oils (Essential Fatty Acids). Basically, modern processing methods destroy the omega 6 content of oils such as corn and soy. It’s cancer causing and heart clogging. The key to health is in consuming unheated, unadulterated omega 6 and omega 3. Omega 6 can be found in safflower and sunflower oil from your local health store or eating nuts and seeds. Omega 3 from flax or salmon (NOT FISH OIL). Peskin states he eats beef almost every day and has no clogged arteries. He says there are numerous other health improvements that go with eating these oils, such as: Sharper mental function, hormone improvement, cancer prevention, energy levels, etc. For us aging guys this is great stuff to know.
Let them eat cake.
Let them eat pork.
Would that be a Yellow Cake? Along with a ham sandwich?
This sort of buffoonery has not tamed the national chicken craving, and angry crowds are demonstrating around the country, especially when the national media foolishly ran pictures of a recent Tehran conference at which the attendees ate…well, you know what they ate.
A picket in every shot?
It’s quite a conjunction of bad news for Supreme Leader Khamenei and his henchmen: there’s a drought; the country’s biggest inland lake, Oroumiyeh, is shrinking (shades of the Soviet catastrophe at the Aral Sea), and the locals are demonstrating there as well.
So they linger frickin’ good?
And every day, Khamenei looks West, toward the setting Syrian sun, and dreads the likelihood that he is watching his own destiny unfold. Faster, please!
Which should come first? The checkin’ or the beg?
Cheers, Michael. Stay safe. And keep smiling.
tks bleachers, both for the puns and the kind words. we’re fine. the Marines are all stateside, the elders are in decent health, and the daughter is fab. we even survived a visit to the cinema to see “Dark Knight II.”
Who knew that chickens would be a more potent weapon than an oil embargo? I wonder if they’ll become vegetarians for the Islamic cause? I doubt it. You can’t eat oil. You CAN eat chicken. I think there are some things people can live without in Iran. Chicken does NOT seem to be one of them. When people start to go hungry, that’s when the real revolution begins. People will put up with a lot of stuff. Hunger is NOT one of them.
actually people put up with hunger…often and everywhere. north korea? no sign of “real revolution” there. or Soviet Albania? no, revolutions are not caused by misery, they are acts of hope, not desperate reactions to despair.
Acts of hope born of desperation. They don’t occur spontaneously or when things are stable. And they require a cadre of people determined to sacrifice everything, if necessary. Not an easy combination to produce..
Michael,
If Assad falls, is there a chance the Iranians will align with the Syrian opposition? I was wondering if they were already hedging their bets and secretly helping the rebels.
the fall of assad would greatly stimulate the iranian people, and discourage the regime. i’m sure the regime has been meeting with opposition groups, and it would be in character for the regime to give a bit of support.
The support to Islamists “the terrorist groups?! I think the vast majority of rebels are a mixture of extreme nationalists and Islamists.
The true opposition is calling for the religious secularism and to separate between the organized religion and the state, and rejects all forms of Arabic extreme nationalism. This is really the ONLY SYRIAN RATIONAL opposition against the Syrian regime. It’s led by a gentleman “Mr. Farid Al-Ghadry”. Except this is a craps.
yes, Mr Ghadri is a real gentleman and a fine man.
My late brother-in-law said once that people would pay anything for beer, cigarettes and gasoline. A caveat should have been added: They have to be able to afford it.
When things are too expensive, the easy option presented to the masses by those in charge is, “Do without”.
That only works for so long.
Such is the pickle that the current ruling clique placed themselves into.
It’s the Stuxchick virus !
The Jews are ritually murdering all the chicks !
(And AC/DC music plays in the night, in the empty chicken coops…)
PS
I am mixing two of today’s columns…
PPS
Is the Twelfth eating all the chickens, hidden in his well ?
Sorry, you are wrong.
It is the imperialistic corporation EvilProfits, Inc., also known as “Chick-Fil-A”, that is concentrating all the chickens of the world in its (dirty) hands, to starve the Anti-Colonialist Mullahs (ACM, soon to be ICBM).
Only the heroic city of Boston is fighting this monster.
PS
Fight folly with folly.
Didn’t the French Revolution finally ignite over bread prices? I wonder what the Farsi is for “Liberty, Equality, and Chicken!”
So as they loss their chicken fillets and become rather hungrier in general… they will become a healthier population than we cornfed, fastfood piggies here in the west.
diet is not the only component of good health, you know. torture and incarceration are bad for your health…not that I’m a fan of fastfood piggery, mind you.
“I’ve always said that the women are the most potent revolutionary force in the “Muslim world.”
Dear Michael,yes, indeed there is NO real freedom in any societies without the women’s freedom. The women in Muslim societies are most cursed and despised…they were wrapped in burlap sacks, then slung on the back of a donkeys.
For example, the UAE is likely to be a country prosperous, specifically “constructionaly.” But it’s UNcivilized country…As long as there are a huge skyscrapers and a great supermarkets filled with women who stuffed in a black burlap sacks, but remains an dismal and disgusting societies!!!
Yes, but those are STYLISH black burlap sacks, Jassem. Credit where credit is due.
Larry, yes, indeed the burlap today is stylish for people who love and enjoy life;) NOT for those who hate and despise life, those who treat their females like cattle or worst! My G-d Bless the only elegant country in that tragic and nasty region (aka Middle East).
Iranians are the wierdest people on earth. I mean that in a general way because while people say all kinds of outlandish things everywhere, in Iran the bizarre is mainstream.
Yesterday the Iranian UN ambassador told the security council that the Israelis blew up their own people in Bulgaria. I do not think these kinds of outlandish accusations, which are a constant stream from Tehran, are cynical. I think a lot of Iranians readily believe them. I also do not believe it is all because of propoganda, it is also cultural.
The chicken shortage is partly blamed on the drought which is driving up feed prices. The drought, however has been attributed by no less than the Iranian president to a western plot. Apparently there is some kind of secret weather machine holding up the rain over Iran.
Right now the US Navy is playing chicken in the Gulf because we take what Iranians say at face value. We think they will try and close the straights giving us an excuse to slam them. That is exactly the wrong approach. Aircraft carriers and F-22s are offensive weapons and should be used that way. If you want to give a warning then the message should be straighforward. Stop your centrifuges now or we will attack. No deadline. No more negotiation. We attack when we choose without additional warning.
Given the history of American fecklessness towards Iran, there is no way the regime will take seriously any threat. Only actions will have an effect. And the best action is not military, but political:: support the Iranian opposition and bring down the regime.
So why should I trust the Iranian opposition any more than Syrian, Egyptian, or Iraqi? Sure there are westernized opposition leaders talking about liberty and all of that but we have heard that song and dance before. I could care less about headscarves. I cannot imagine a truly pro-western and pro-Israel Iran no matter what happens.
I am concerned that we do not have the time to hope for a political solution. Military losses have a way of bringing down governments. Perhaps the best chance for the opposition is a US military attack. It is a win-win situation if we can really stop the nuclear program and destroy most of the offensive capability.
While governments sometimes accurately reflect the populace, that isn’t the case with Iran. Iranians aren’t, for the most part, “the wierdest people on earth”. In my days as a grad student (studying International Politics), I had an Iranian housemate (studying nuclear engineering, as it happens, on a Pahlevi fellowship). Very nice fellow, as were the other Iranians who passed through our place. But these were secular, life-loving people, not the sort who just a few years later stormed the US Embassy in Teheran. I spent almost two weeks in Iran (some of that with the Jewish community in Teheran) in ’76; fascinating place.
Even today most Iranians are secular, don’t attend the mosques, and don’t hate the West. Unfortunately, there are other Iranians with the guns, the power, and the religious fervor to carry their country in a different direction.
To quote a ancient, but famous queen, “Let them eat cake”.
roaches are rich in protein
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